The Knee-born Forefather

A member of the first human generation, born from the swollen knee of the stone-born primordial ancestor. In the Tao origin narrative the knee-born children of the stone ancestor and of the bamboo ancestor intermarried across the two lines and so became the true forebears of the Tao people, while marriages within a single ancestor's issue yielded deformed or blind children. He and his wife thus embody the founding of legitimate marriage and descent; the recorded myths preserve his role rather than a personal name.

Parentage

• The Stone-born Ancestor

Domains

• ancestry and origins

Powers

• found the legitimate human line by cross-lineage marriage

Relations

• spouse: The Knee-born Foremother

Sources

• Kano & Segawa (1956), An Illustrated Ethnography of Formosan Aborigines, Vol. I: The Yami.
• Wei Hwei-lin & Liu Pin-hsiung (1962), Social Structure of the Yami, Botel Tobago, Academia Sinica.